Who has the right to be a full member of a nation-state? Inherited privileges, for reasons of birth or blood, as they are put forward by and, should force us to ask: Why is it that someone cannot become a full member of a society, even if she lives, works, and has her affective relations within the borders of that nation-state? As Ayelet Shachar underlines, the place of birth is fundamental in the assignment of political membership. The aim of this (...) article is to examine if we should get rid of the idea of citizenship or if we can just widen the concept in order to think a theory wide enough to include those who now are misrecognized. (shrink)

In this presentation I will argue that parental rights are property rights by applying John Locke’s theory of property ownership. I will then explore what this theory implies about parental rights when children are abused by their parents, when children are born as a result of rape, and when children are the unintentional result of consensual sex between two persons who did not previously intend to have children together.

The Right to Have Rights as the Right to Asylum This article argues that the right to have rights, as launched by Hannah Arendt, is relative to refugee displacement and hence translates as a right to asylum. It takes issue with the dominant view that the public/private divide is the locus classicus of the meaning of this primordial right. A different direction of thought is proposed, proceeding from Arendt’s recovery of the spatiality of law. The unencompassibility (...) of place in matters of rights, freedom and equality brings this right into view as a claim at the behest of those who have lost a legal place of their own. This also helps us to gain better understanding of Arendt’s rebuttal of the sharp-edged distinction between refugees and stateless persons and to discover the defiant potential of the right to have rights to illuminate the refugee’s claim to asylum as a claim to an own place where protection can be enjoyed again. (shrink)

Whereas previous discussions on ownership of biological material have been much informed by the natural rights tradition, insufficient attention has been paid to the strand in liberal political theory represented by Felix Cohen, Tony Honoré, and others, which treats property relations as socially constructed bundles of rights. In accordance with that tradition, we propose that the primary normative issue is what combination of rights a person should have to a particular item of biological material. Whether (...) that bundle qualifies to be called “property” or “ownership” is a secondary, terminological issue. We suggest five principles of bodily rights and show how they can be applied to the construction of ethically appropriate bundles of rights to biological material. (shrink)

This paper draws upon Hannah Arendt's idea of the 'right to have rights' to critique the current protection gap faced by refugees today. While refugees are protected from refoulement once they make it to the jurisdiction or territory of a state, they face an ever-increasing array of non-entrée policies designed to stymie access to state territory. Without being able to enter a state capable of securing their claims to safety and dignity, refugees cannot achieve the rights which (...) ought to be afforded to them under international law. Drawing upon both legal theory and political philosophy, this paper argues that refugees today, just as the stateless in Arendt’s time, must be afforded the ‘right to have rights’, understood as a right to enter state territory. (shrink)

Stephen May (2011) holds that language rights have been insufficiently recognized, or just rejected as problematic, in human rights theory and practice. Defending the “human rights approach to language rights”, he claims that language rights should be accorded the status of fundamental human rights, recognized as such by states and international organizations. This article argues that the notion of language rights is far from clear. According to May, one key reason for rejecting (...) the claim that language rights should be considered as human rights is the widespread belief that language rights are collective rights. In order to address this kind of objection, the collective character attributed to language rights must be carefully assessed, distinguishing two different views of what a collective right is. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed an upsurge of political readings of the right to have rights. The gist of the argument is that this right only comes into being in the act of claiming or taking it. At the same time, the political reading suffers from a normative lacuna which is difficult to ignore if right is not to collapse into might. The present article seeks to show that this normative lacuna can be accounted for if one situates (...) the political reading in relation to a certain form of government. Acknowledging Montesquieu’s influence on Arendt’s resort to the principles which guide political action, the article offers a new interpretation of the normative basis of the right to have rights. It argues, first, that this right is democratic, not political, and second, that the principle which sets the right in motion is responsibility, not freedom. (shrink)

In her influential discussion of the plight of stateless people, Hannah Arendt invokes the ‘right to have rights’ as the one true human right. In doing so she establishes an aporia. If statelessness corresponds not only to a situation of rightlessness but also to a life deprived of public appearance, how could those excluded from politics possibly claim the right to have rights? In this article I examine Jacques Rancière’s response to Arendt’s aporetic account of human (...) rights, situating this in relation to his wider criticism of Arendt’s conception of the political. According to Rancière, Arendt depoliticizes human rights in identifying the human with mere life (zoë) and the citizen with the good life (bios politikos). For, in doing so, she takes the distinction between zoë and the bios politikos to be ontologically given whereas politics is typically about contesting how that distinction is drawn. For Rancière ‘the human’ in human rights does not refer to a life deprived of politics. Rather, the human is a litigious name that politicizes the distinction between those who are qualified to participate in politics and those who are not. In contrast to Arendt, Rancière’s approach enables us to recognize contests over human rights, such as that of the sans papiers, as part and parcel of social struggles that are the core of political life. (shrink)

Five leading thinkers on the concept of 'rights' in an era of rightlessness Sixty years ago, the political theorist Hannah Arendt, deprived of her German citizenship as a Jew and in exile from her country, observed that before people can enjoy any of the 'inalienable' Rights of Man--before there can be any specific rights to education, work, voting, and so on--there must first be such a thing as 'the right to have rights.' The concept received (...) little attention at the time, but in our age of refugee crises and extra-state war, the phrase has become the center of a crucial and lively debate. Here five leading thinkers from varied disciplines, including history, law, and politics, discuss the critical issue of the basis of rights and the meaning of radical democratic politics today. (shrink)

Readers of Hannah Arendt’s now classic formulation of the statelessness problem in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism abound at a moment when the number of stateless peoples worldwide continues to rise exponentially. Along with statelessness, few concepts in Arendt scholarship have spawned such a volume of literature, and perhaps none have provoked as much interest outside of the field of philosophy, as ‘the right to have rights.’ Interpreting this enigmatic term exposes the heart of (...) our beliefs about the nature of the political and has important consequences for how we practice politics on a global scale because it implicitly takes plural human beings, and not the citizen, as its subjects. Arendt’s conceptualization of this problem remains unsurpassed in its diagnosis of the political situation of statelessness, as well as its intimate description of the human cost of what she refers to as ‘world loss,’ a phenomenon that the prevailing human rights and global justice discourse does not take into account. And yet, as an alternative framework for thinking about global politics, the right to have rights resists easy interpretation, let alone practical application. (shrink)

This article examines how Hannah Arendt’s idea of a “right to have rights” could travel in the Americas. It offers a reading of the right to have rights that foregrounds the right to land as a basic right. This reading emerges through an attention to contemporary Indigenous social movements and political philosophy. Taken together, this examination and reading ask justice-oriented actors to support land back movements as part of a broader practice of defending human rights (...) and situating those rights within a responsibility to land. (shrink)

In the following study the author goes back to the beginnings of the Women's Rights movements in order to pose the question on gender equality by approaching it through the prism of language as a powerful tool in human rights battles. This permits her to show the deep interrelation between women's struggle for recognition and some particular women rights, like the "feminization" of professional titles and the implementation of a gender sensitive language. Hence she argues the thesis (...) that even in the most advanced European democracies, where freedom of speech, education, and scientific research seem actually to be legally guaranteed as universal rights, there is still a deep conflict in regard to the use of language and also that we have throughout history backlashes, reproductions of past stereotypes, and a loss of women's rights which were previously acquired. (shrink)

Drawing its strength from the UN Charter and UDHR, human rights ethics is a beacon of hope and a promise that requires continuous reaffirmation during these turbulent times. These two documents, with their unwavering faith in ‘fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,’ have shaped our understanding of human rights as global and universal ethics. However, this (...) faith is now being severely tested by four countercurrents: extremism, exclusionism, selectivism, and populism. These countercurrents pose significant and urgent human rights threats that activists, academics, and policymakers must confront by reasserting the basic core values of the UN Charter and UDHR. (shrink)

This analysis maps the deepening global crisis and the principles of its resolution by life-value analysis and method. Received theories of economics and justice and modern rights doctrines are shown to have no ground in life value and to be incapable of recognizing universal life goods and the rising threats to them. In response to this system failure at theoretical and operational levels, the unifying nature and measure of life value are defined to provide the long-missing basis for (...) understanding the common interest, human rights and social justice—that is, the universal life necessities of humanity across cultures and the evolving civil commons infrastructures to ensure them. In contrast, the treaty-imposed corporate rights system miscalled “globalization” is structured to predate life means and support systems at all levels with no accountability beyond itself. Only the logic of life value, human rights and life-protective law, it is concluded, can comprehend or govern this inherently life-blind and cumulatively eco-genocidal regime. (shrink)

This analysis maps the deepening global crisis and the principles of its resolution by life-value analysis and method. Received theories of economics and justice and modern rights doctrines are shown to have no ground in life value and to be incapable of recognizing universal life goods and the rising threats to them. In response to this system failure at theoretical and operational levels, the unifying nature and measure of life value are defined to provide the long-missing basis for (...) understanding the common interest, human rights and social justice—that is, the universal life necessities of humanity across cultures and the evolving civil commons infrastructures to ensure them. In contrast, the treaty-imposed corporate rights system miscalled “globalization” is structured to predate life means and support systems at all levels with no accountability beyond itself. Only the logic of life value, human rights and life-protective law, it is concluded, can comprehend or govern this inherently life-blind and cumulatively eco-genocidal regime. (shrink)

Constitutionalising a right makes it immune to the possibility of democratic revision. So, constitutional rights that set certain substantive values beyond the reach of routine political revision have the effect of pre-empting decisions that might otherwise be arrived at through democratic procedures. To the extent that environmental rights can be taken to embody substantive value commitments, they would appear to be vulnerable to the criticism that the constitutional entrenchment of them is undemocratic. Certain procedural rights, however, (...) are necessary for the very functioning of democracy as such. Can procedural environmental rights be justified on this ground? And what about the substantive right to an adequate environment? Argues that both kinds of environmental rights, in common with some existing and far less controversial rights, can in fact be justified on the very grounds that democracy itself is justified. (shrink)

The paper starts by examining some of the key conceptual problems related to the idea of human rights, as well as some key arguments raised in defence of human rights as universal and emacipatory modern project. This is followed by a discussion on cultural rights, sometimes understood as a correction of human rights? universalism, at other times taken as their?logical extension?; it will be shown how human rights have gradually begun to be amalgamated with (...) cultural and collective rights. The third section of the paper continues with an overview of anthropological critique of cultural rights, with an emphasis on ethnographies critically examining the domination of the?rights talk? in perceptions and self-perceptions of various local?cultural? struggles. Finally, the issue of the universality of human rights is reexamined from the perspective of the particularity of citizens? rights with the aim of questioning the validity of their conceptual demarcation. (shrink)

The concept of rights, as has often been noted, became prominent at a particular time in our history. It is associated especially with seventeenth and eighteenth century political ideas about the rights of individuals versus those of governments, and with such notable events as the American Declaration of Independence. It was at this time, too, that debates about rights of property and liberty became prominent. What was the role of this concept in earlier times? Has it always (...) existed? Does it have a permanent place in our moral thinking? According to H.L.A. Hart. (shrink)

In her recent article, Sofia Näsström argues that the principle of responsibility provides a “normative basis” both for Hannah Arendt’s notion of the right to have right and for modern democracy. In this response, I argue that, while Näsström raises crucial questions regarding the relationships between principles of action, the right to have rights, and the institutionalization of democracy, she does not always recognize the nuance of Arendt’s insight into these questions.

Worldwide wisdom teaches, and philosophy demonstrates, that universally valid is only the perspective able to recognize everybody’s right to be treated in a just manner. From this point of view we have to recognize that all propositions are in some sense true, and hence that even those who are wrong are, from a particular point of view, right. Therefore, we have the duty to understand in which sense even populist stances are, at least in some sense, true. For (...) instance, they can help us to keep in mind the limits of democracy and, in this way, to escape the dangerous “democratic superstition.”. (shrink)

Based upon an analysis of the development of the human rights tradition, the language of human rights is best reserved for beings capable of agency. Less restrictive conceptions of rights, such as those that link rights to the protection of needs, leads to a proliferation of rights of a kind that dilutes the normative importance of rights. Denying that infants have rights need not diminish the moral significance of their claims to care. (...) The absence of a right need not signal diminished moral importance. (shrink)

``I am therefore I have rights," argues this paper. Mere existence qualifies a human being for universal human rights. Yet human beings do not live in solitude; they are always embedded in a network of social relations which determines their rights and duties in its own terms. Consequently, the debate about the universality and relativism of human rights can be best understood by combining legal and sociological perspectives. Such an approach is used in this article (...) to explore the tensions and contests around the universality of human rights in Islamic law. Whether all human beings or just citizens are qualified for the inviolability of human rights is a question which divided Muslim jurists into two schools: Universalistic School, emanating from Abu Hanifa, advocated for the universality of human rights, while Communalistic School, originating from Malik, Shafii and Ibn Hanbal, advocated for civil rights. Universalistic School was adopted by such great cosmopolitan empires as Umayyads, Abbasids, Mughals and Ottomans. It was also reformed by the Ottomans during the nineteenth century in the light of the new notions of universal human rights in Europe to purge remaining discriminatory practices against non-Muslim citizens and to justify constitutionalism and democracy. Yet the universalistic tradition in Islamic law has been forgotten as the chain of memory was broken after the collapse of Ottoman Empire. This article briefly unearths the forgotten universalistic approach in Islamic law to build upon it a modern universalistic human rights theory for which there is a pressing need at this age of globalization. (shrink)

It has become increasingly common for animal ethicists to advance deontological theories of animal rights, as opposed to merely welfarist theories of animals’ moral significance. Kantians, however, have not been so quick to adapt. The gates to the Kingdom of Ends are closed to any who lack rational autonomy. Christine Korsgaard’s recent work, however, has made a concerted effort to find a place for animals within Kant’s Kingdom of Ends. I argue that Korsgaard can have animal (...) class='Hi'>rights or Kantian ethics, but not both. (shrink)

Although preservationists sometimes allege a right of wild areas to remain wild, their arguments do not warrant the ascription of such a right. It is hard to see how any argument to this conclusion could be persuasive, for (1) X having a right to Y requires that depriving X of Y injure X (other things being equal), and (2) the only X we have reason to think can be injured is an X which possesses consciousness. On the other hand, (...) rights are problematic creatures, and the individualistic moral view they presuppose does not accord well with the holistic perspective of many preservationists. While it might be possible to develop this perspective into a moral theory that gives wildemess intrinsic value, there seems a greater need for clarifying the policy implications of accepted moral principles. (shrink)

A communitarian perspective, which is characteristic of African normative thought, accords some kind of primacy to society or a group, whereas human rights are by definition duties that others have to treat individuals in certain ways, even when not doing so would be better for others. Is there any place for human rights in an Afro-communitarian political and legal philosophy, and, if so, what is it? I seek to answer these questions, in part by critically exploring one (...) of the most influential theoretical works on human rights in a sub-Saharan setting, namely, Claude Ake’s ‘The African Context of Human Rights’. Ake famously maintains that a typically Western approach to rights is inappropriate in the sub-Saharan region, in two major respects. First, Ake contends that although a human rights legal framework might be suitable for an ‘individualistic’ society, it is not for one of the sort common among traditional black peoples, for whom group rights are alone apt. Second, Ake maintains that, insofar as rights are relevant, rights to socio-economic goods are of much more importance in an African context than rights to civil liberties, due process and the like. Using Ake’s article as a foil, I draw on values salient in sub-Saharan moral worldviews to construct a unified philosophy of rights that not only provides reason to doubt his two claims, but also offers a promising way to reconcile a communitarian framework with a robust prizing of human rights alongside ones that are more collectively oriented. In short, I aim to provide a principled foundation for the core elements of the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights. (shrink)

This essay addresses the other side of the robot ethics debate, taking up and investigating the question “Can and should robots have rights?” The examination of this subject proceeds by way of three steps or movements. We begin by looking at and analyzing the form of the question itself. There is an important philosophical difference between the two modal verbs that organize the inquiry—can and should. This difference has considerable history behind it that influences what is asked about (...) and how. Second, capitalizing on this verbal distinction, it is possible to identify four modalities concerning social robots and the question of rights. The second section will identify and critically assess these four modalities as they have been deployed and developed in the current literature. Finally, we will conclude by proposing another alternative, a way of thinking otherwise that effectively challenges the existing rules of the game and provides for other ways of theorizing moral standing that can scale to the unique challenges and opportunities that are confronted in the face of social robots. (shrink)

To a lay audience, it might seem surprising that it has to be shown that children are rightholders, since, for instance, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights explicitly states that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” which would seem to include children as rightholders. However, the claim that all human beings are rightholders is in fact surprisingly difficult to defend. When philosophers try to explain how all human beings are rightholders, they end (...) up adopting what Peter Singer calls a “speciesist” position, where speciesism is defined as morally favoring a particular species—in this case, human beings—over others without sufficient justification. This chapter develops the “genetic basis for moral agency” account of rightholding and explains how this account can allow all human beings, including very young children, to be rightholders without being speciesist. (shrink)

In dialogue with the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Seyla Benhabib the author draws on the idea of a right to have rights and raises the question under which political conditions asylum can be a subjective right for political refugees. He argues that mere spontaneous acts of humanitarianism will not suffice to define the institutional commitments of liberal democracies in refugee policy. At the same time, no duty for any particular state to take up refugees can be (...) derived from a right to have rights. The quest for institutional solutions for a timely migration and asylum policy will rather enhance the discourses on the self-understanding of liberal democracies. With a critical eye on German asylum legislation and legal practice, the author contends that it will be a task of any co-ordinated European right of asylum to define political persecution in relation to the first dimension of human rights in order to differentiate the right of asylum from immigration legislation. (shrink)

What weight should we place on self-determination, democracy, human rights and equality in an account of migration justice? Anna Stilz and Andrea Sangiovanni offer insightful comments that prompt us to consider such questions. In addressing their welcome critiques I aim to show how my account can help reduce migration injustice in our contemporary world. As I argue, there is no right to free movement across state borders. However, migrants do have rights to a fair process for determining (...) their rights. Democratic communities should have scope to make many migration decisions, although there are constraints on that self-determination. The migration governance oversight arrangements I favor are compatible with core requirements of agency and responsiveness that are operative in mature democracies. In responding to concerns about objectionable power inequalities that often characterize temporary worker programs, I show why addressing these issues requires various institutional protections that are well enforced. Robust migration governance arrangements can assist in formulating defensible migration policies that we can implement here and now as we aim to reduce migration injustices in our current world. (shrink)

Background: Sharing information with relatives of elderly patients in primary care and in hospital has to fit into the complex set of obligations, justifications and pressures concerning the provision of information, and the results of some studies point to the need for further empirical studies exploring issues of patient autonomy, privacy and informed consent in the day-to-day care of older people.Objectives: To know the frequency with which “capable” patients over 65 years of age receive information when admitted to hospital, the (...) information offered to the families concerned, the person who gives consent for medical intervention, and the degree of satisfaction with the information received and the healthcare provided.Method: A descriptive questionnaire given to 200 patients and 200 relatives during the patients’ stay in hospital.Results: Only 5% of patients confirmed that they had been asked whether information could be given to their relatives. A significantly higher proportion of relatives received information on the successive stages of the care offered than did patients themselves. As the age of the patients increased, so the number who were given information, understood the information and were asked for their consent for complementary tests decreased. The degree of satisfaction with the information offered was high for both patients and relatives , despite the irregularities observed.Conclusions: The capacity of elderly patients to participate in the decision-making process is frequently doubted simply because they have reached a certain age and it is thought that relatives should act as their representatives. In Spain, the opinion of the family and doctors appears to play a larger role in making decisions than does the concept of patient autonomy. (shrink)

Animals have moral standing; that is, they have properties (including the ability to feel pain) that qualify them for the protections of morality. It follows from this that humans have moral obligations toward animals, and because rights are logically correlative to obligations, animals have rights.

A communitarian perspective, which is characteristic of African normative thought, accords some kind of primacy to society or a group, whereas human rights are by definition duties that others have to treat individuals in certain ways, even when not doing so would be better for others. Is there any place for human rights in an Afro-communitarian political and legal philosophy, and, if so, what is it? I seek to answer these questions, in part by critically exploring one (...) of the most influential theoretical works on human rights in a sub-Saharan setting, namely, Claude Ake’s ‘The African Context of Human Rights’. Ake famously maintains that a typically Western approach to rights is inappropriate in the sub-Saharan region, in two major respects. First, Ake contends that although a human rights legal framework might be suitable for an ‘individualistic’ society, it is not for one of the sort common among traditional black peoples, for whom group rights are alone apt. Second, Ake maintains that, insofar as rights are relevant, rights to socio-economic goods are of much more importance in an African context than rights to civil liberties, due process and the like. Using Ake’s article as a foil, I draw on values salient in sub-Saharan moral worldviews to construct a unified philosophy of rights that not only provides reason to doubt his two claims, but also offers a promising way to reconcile a communitarian framework with a robust prizing of human rights alongside ones that are more collectively oriented. In short, I aim to provide a principled foundation for the core elements of the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights. (shrink)

The notion of human rights is highly controversial and contested in modern scholarship. However, human rights have been defined as ‘the rational basis… for a justified demand.’ What constitutes demand should be understood as that which is different from favor or privilege but one's due, free from racial, religious, gender, political inclinations. But since rights are basic due to the fact that they are necessary for the enjoyment of something else, we are poised to examine it (...) from the pre-figurative, configurative and post-figurative stages of development in Africa. This enterprise anchors on the belief in cosmotheandrisation of human rights in Africa: cosmos ‘earth’, theos ‘God’ and anthropos ‘human’. These three levels of horizontal and vertical relationship guarantee the respect for human rights in traditional Africa. Through this approach, this enterprise shows that the positive approach to human rights is majorly declarative without corresponding pragmatic manifestation. (shrink)

The emergence of the European Union citizenship agenda has mainly taken place along the evolution of mobility rights, with the goal of creating a pan-European labor market. Mobility undermines the nationally embedded notion of industrial citizenship. Industrial citizenship protects workers’ rights and secures their participation in national political systems. The Europeanization of labor markets severs the relationship between state, territory and citizen on which industrial citizenship has been built, undermining worker collectivism and access to representation. This is legitimated (...) in terms of building market-citizenship, i.e., enabling mobile workers as market actors. However, the way mobility is regulated in the EU has the purpose and effect of weakening collective labor institutions, which also undermines workers’ ability to act as autonomous market actors. The same factors which undermine the industrial citizenship of mobile workers also prevent them from being effective free market agents: i.e., they can neither negotiate nor enforce individual contracts effectively in the face of systematic employer fraud and wage theft. The “Arendtian dilemma” of the “right to have rights” — a dilemma that derives from the claim that rights depend on the existence of a political community, which until now is the territorially exclusive nation-state, rather than universal personhood — emerges as industrial citizenship is internationalized. By disembeddeding workers from host-country industrial relations systems, EU regulation provides the social context in which workers’ rights become alienable. (shrink)

In recent years irregular immigration has attracted increasing scholarly attention. Current academic debate casts the irregular immigrant in the role of the new political subject who acts out a right to have rights and/or as the rightless victim who is subjected to violence and abuse. However, the conception of the irregular immigrant as harbinger of political change and/or victim reifies the persistent dichotomy between inclusion and exclusion. It ignores that irregular immigrants are not by definition excluded from a (...) normal life and that numerous immigrants live in the interstices between full legal inclusion and exclusion without democratic legal order being cast to ruin. The question that underlies this essay is: What concept of law can accommodate the unauthorized presence of immigrants (i) without reducing them to bare life, struggling to survive and/or assigning them a political agency and (ii) without taking recourse to the use of force and violence in a zero-tolerance policy? To answer this question, this article draws on what Agamben has coined the potentiality of the law and unpacks Judith Shklar’s idea of different degrees of legalism. (shrink)

Global debates in approaches to HIV/AIDS control have recently moved away from a uniformly strong human rights-based focus. Public health utilitarianism has become increasingly important in shaping national and international policies. However, potentially contradictory imperatives may require reconciliation of individual reproductive and other human rights with public health objectives. Current reproductive health guidelines remain largely nonprescriptive on the advisability of pregnancy amongst HIV-positive couples, mainly relying on effective counselling to enable autonomous decision-making by clients. Yet, health care (...) provider values and attitudes may substantially impact on the effectiveness of nonprescriptive guidelines, particularly where social norms and stereotypes regarding childbearing are powerful, and where providers are subjected to dual loyalty pressures, with potentially adverse impacts on rights of service users. Data from a study of user experiences and perceptions of reproductive and HIV/AIDS services are used to illustrate a rights analysis of how reproductive health policy should integrate a rights perspective into the way services engage with HIV-positive persons and their reproductive choices. The analysis draws on recognised tools developed to evaluate health policies for their human rights impacts and on a model developed for health equity research in South Africa to argue for greater recognition of agency on the part of persons affected by HIV/AIDS in the development and content of policies on reproductive choices. We conclude by proposing strategies that are based upon a synergy between human rights and public health approaches to policy on reproductive health choices for persons with HIV/AIDS. (shrink)

My claim is that Arendt founds the 'right to have rights' in the anarchic event of natality. Arendt is very explicit that the event of natality is an ontological event. In The Human Condition, she writes: "The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal "natural" ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted." At the same time, she is equally insistent that this ontological event (...) is not metaphysical; it is not the origin of anything like human nature: "To avoid misunderstanding, the human condition is not the same as human nature and the sum total of human activities and capabilities which correspond to the human condition do not constitute anything like human nature". Indeed, this event has the character of a "startling unexpectedness." Natality, she argues, is the condition for human existence, but it can never "…explain what we are or answer the question of who we are for the simple reason that [it] can never condition us absolutely". The 'who' does not possess an enduring, fixed nature, but is instead inherently marked by contingency and unpredictability. Arendt's ontology, therefore, does not describe an immutable order of essences; it does not seek enduring truths upon which to ground both thought and action; it does not posit a metaphysical notion of human nature or subjectivity in which human rights are inalienably inscribed. Instead, it is rooted in an unpredictable, anarchic event that provides the arche and principium of human action. For Arendt, the event of natality is the arche in the double etymological sense of origin and rule. In other words, natality is the unpredictable, anarchic origin that carries its rule or principle within it. As she points out in On Revolution, "What saves the act of beginning from its own arbitrariness is that it carries its own principle within itself or, to be more precise, that beginning and principle, principium and principle, are not only related to each other, but are coeval." Arendt goes on to argue: "For the Greek word for beginning is arche, and arche means both beginning and principle." By articulating this principium, Arendt does not give us an ontological politics; rather, she provides an ontological foundation for human rights. (shrink)

This ground-breaking book is designed to raise awareness of human rights implications in psychology, and provide knowledge and tools enabling psychologists to put a human rights perspective into practice. Psychologists have always been deeply engaged in alleviating the harmful consequences human rights violations have on individuals. However, despite the fundamental role that human rights play for professional psychology and psychologists, human rights education is underdeveloped in psychologists' academic and vocational training. This book, the (...) first of its kind, looks to change this, by: raising awareness among professional psychologists, university teachers and psychology students about their role as human rights promoters and protectors providing knowledge and tools enabling them to put a human rights perspective into practice providing texts and methods for teaching human rights. Featuring chapters from leading scholars in the field, spanning18 countries and six continents, the book identifies how psychologists can ensure they are practising in a responsible way, as well as contributing to wider society with a clear knowledge of human rights issues in relation to culture, gender, organisations and more. Including hands-on recommendations, case studies and discussion points, this is essential reading for professional psychologists as part of continuing professional development and those in training and taking psychology courses. (shrink)

While there may be several practical concerns regarding the practice of corporate lobbying of government officials, there is the more basic question of a corporation’s moral right to do so. I argue that group agents such as corporations have no moral rights, and thereby cannot have the right to lobby. There may be a basis for some legal rights for corporations, but I argue that lobbying cannot be one of the legal rights, even by reference (...) to the rights of the individuals that make up the corporation. I end the paper by a discussion of how this argument applies to all private organizations, including public interest organizations. (shrink)

This book takes a distinctive and innovative approach to a relatively under-explored question, namely: Why do we have human rights? Much political discourse simply proceeds from the idea that humans have rights because they are human without seriously interrogating this notion. Egalitarian Rights Recognition offers an account of how human rights are created and how they may be seen to be legitimate: rights are created through social recognition. By combining readings of 19th Century (...) English philosopher T.H. Green with 20th Century political theorist Hannah Arendt, the author constructs a new theory of the social recognition of rights. He challenges both the standard ‘natural rights’ approach and also the main accounts of the social recognition of rights which tend to portray social recognition as settled norms or established ways of acting. In contrast, Hann puts forward a 10-point account of the dynamic and contingent social recognition of human rights, which emphasises the importance of meaningful socio-economic equality. (shrink)

This paper applies aspects of Hugo Grotius's theologically informed theory of property to contemporary issues concerning access to the human DNA sequence and patenting practices. It argues that Christians who contribute to public debate in these areas might beneficially employ some of the concepts with which he worked--notably "common right," the "right of necessity," and "use right." In the seventeenth century, wars were fought over trading rights and access to the sea. In the twenty-first century, information and intellectual property (...) are the issues of the day. Grotius's writings serve to correct the overemphasis in modern liberalism on individual rights, and have practical application to the debate concerning the reduction of the human genome to the status of private property. (shrink)

The Right of Nonuse provides a fresh and remarkably different perspective on the real causes of the ills plaguing the world's resources and environment. It re-examines the very nature of nature, and from this new perspective, argues that what is needed is for humans to grant to natural resources a legal right to be left alone - a right of nonuse. In the process, it explores the following questions: Why do natural resources continue to be depleted and removed at an (...) alarming rate? Why are species becoming extinct at a pace that may be unprecedented? Why does the environment continue to be polluted? Why do the weather and climate seem to be changing? Perhaps most important, why have laws, legal institutions and governments been unable to address and correct these problems? Jan Laitos reviews the history of our relationship with the natural environment and develops new ways of thinking about nature and its protection. Instead of proceeding with human-based goals, Laitos argues that we should protect environmental resources for their own intrinsic value. Instead of giving humans more and more rights to clean up the environment, and to halt resources depletion, a right of nonuse held by the resource itself should be created. Natural resources have always possessed this parallel nonuse function, and society should recognize and legitimize it. (shrink)